Israelis have long claimed that Palestinians 'voluntarily' fled their homes and lands to allow Israel to be established
News Desk - The Cradle
Haaretz reported on 27 February that the documents contain first-hand accounts of the 1948 war (known by Palestinians as the Nakba) written by commanders in the Zionist militias, which formed the core of the Israeli military.
The documents were discovered after someone left boxes containing thousands of documents next to a dumpster in a Tel Aviv neighborhood two years ago.
According to the Israeli newspaper, the discovery of the documents “completely dispels the Israeli narrative according to which the country's Arab inhabitants fled of their own volition at the behest of their own leaders.”
The documents include an account of the war written by Yitzhak Broshi, commander of Golani's 12th Battalion. Broshi explains that he gave the order to raze the village of Arab a-Zabah, a Bedouin community in the Lower Galilee, and kill every person found there. “Every Arab among the Zabahim is to be killed,” his order stated.
In another case, Broshi ordered his troops to search for Arabs hiding in the Mount Turan area of the Lower Galilee after it had already been conquered. “Kill anyone who is hiding,” Broshi's order read.
Haaretz notes that although nearly 80 years have passed since the Nakba, which Israelis call the “War of Independence,” much material in Israel's archives remains classified. As a result, “historical memory in Israel is a deception.”
“It can now be confirmed, on the basis of an impressive range of evidence, that the IDF [Israeli army] expelled Arabs systematically and violently during the War of Independence. The expulsion was effected by massacres, murder, and a variety of moves aimed at terrorizing this civilian population and expediting its flight,” Haaretz concluded.
“How do you expel a village?” asked Maxim Cohen, a commander of the Carmeli Brigade. “You lop off the ear of one of the Arabs before everyone else's eyes, and they all flee. In practice, no village was evacuated without stabbing someone in the stomach or by means of similar methods. We won thanks only to the fear of the Arabs, and they were fearful only of deeds that were not in accordance with the law.”
Haim Ben-David, who later obtained the rank of major general and became former prime minister David Ben Gurion's military secretary, explained that orders to kill and expel Palestinian civilians during the 1948 war were given verbally rather than written down.
“In our operative orders, we were careful not to mention killing. The orders relating to conduct were orally conveyed to the battalion commanders,” Ben-David explained.
Yisrael Carmi, a battalion commander in the 7th Brigade, stated that during the conquest of Beersheba in October 1948, he gave the order that any Palestinian who resisted expulsion was to be executed.
“I conquered the city,” Carmi testified. “In mopping up that area, I gave an order to annihilate anyone who appeared in the street, whether they resisted or did not resist. An order was given to destroy everything. After the conquest of the police station – after the surrender – the murder stopped. Until then, everyone was killed – women and children and everyone. Then an order was given to the people to go to Hebron. Anyone who didn't go was ‘removed.’”
Mordechai Maklef, an operations officer, explained, “The intention was to expel.”
“It is impossible to expel 114,000 people who lived [in the Galilee] without terror. There had to have been an element of initial terror for them to leave.”
In an effort to conceal this history, Israel has released to the public only a million files out of 17 million in the Israel State Archives and the Army and Defense Establishment Archives.
The archives' staff was told to conceal “material that might harm the [army's] image [and show it] as an occupying army devoid of moral foundations, [which displays] violent behavior against an Arab population and cruel acts (killing, murder).”
The staff was told to prevent the release of documents showing the “expulsion of Arabs” and “orders to harm infiltrators [Arabs trying to return to their villages].”
Although documents revealing Israel’s murder and expulsion of Palestinians to create the state have surfaced, some Israeli leaders have privately acknowledged what Palestinians have asserted for decades.
During a cabinet meeting held after the 1948 war, Israeli interior minister at the time Yitzhak Gruenbaum discussed how orders “to cleanse the territory” had been issued.
“Anyone who looks from the side at all these matters cannot find an explanation for the flight of the Arabs. It stands to reason that they were driven to flee because [people] robbed, raped, murdered, expelled,” he stated.
One of the largest massacres during the Nakba took place in the town of Dawayima, in the Lachish region in the northern Negev. According to the testimony of a soldier, Meir Efron, given to the Mapam political party, “There was no battle, and there was no resistance. The first conquerors killed 80 to 100 [male] Arabs, women, and children.”
“One commander ordered the sapper to put two old Arab women into a certain house, and to blow it up with them inside. Another soldier boasted that he had raped an Arab woman and then shot her. One woman who was holding a newborn baby worked as a cleaner. She worked for a day or two, and in the end, they shot her and her baby.”
Haaretz notes that according to hundreds of testimonies of Palestinians collected by Palestinian historian Salah Abd al-Jawad, at least 100 massacres of civilians took place during the Nakba, in one out of every five villages that were captured by Israel's nascent military.
In six of the massacres, Israeli troops murdered between 50 and 100 victims.
Jawad's research found a four-stage pattern emerged during the conquest of territory that became Israel: Israeli troops encircled villages from three directions, terrorizing the Palestinian residents with shooting and shelling; they permitted the escape of some locals to neighboring countries; murdered those inhabitants who did not leave, in particular males aged 15 to 50; and blew up and burned homes, often with people still inside.
Israeli troops have used similar methods in Gaza since 2023. “That has been the pattern all along. Israel brought about the death of an estimated 100,000 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip after 7 October, but not one soldier has been accused of murder or manslaughter. As of this writing, one soldier has been tried for looting,” Haaretz observed.
“The denial of the crimes of 1948 has fueled decades of conflict. What will the denial of the crimes of Gaza bring down upon us?” the Israeli paper asked.
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